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You are here: Home / preschool / Exploring Ice in the Sensory Table

Exploring Ice in the Sensory Table

January 8, 2013 by Sheryl Cooper

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This post might contain affiliate links. CLICK HERE for more information. Thanks for visiting!

This post might contain affiliate links. CLICK HERE for more information. Thanks for visiting!

Inside: This sensory activity involving ice and salt doubles as a great science experiment. Squeezing the pipette also adds great fine motor practice!

Update on this post: Since writing this post, many of my readers have pointed out the dangers of ice and salt burning the skin. I am so appreciative to those that took the time to share this information with me. Therefore, I do not recommend this using free cups of salt, as pictured below. I would have them continue to squirt the warm water on the ice and then remove a piece and show them what happens when I shake salt on it.  As with all activities that are done with small children, adult supervision is extremely important. 

 

 

 

One of our favorite winter activities is exploring ice in the sensory table. It’s fun to freeze water from different containers so that you get different shapes and sizes, but having them all the same size is fine, too, as we did in this activity. We added some fine motor to this ice activity by supplying pipettes. We then tinted the warm water blue so they could see it move up and down in the pipette, then squirting onto the ice. There is a lot of movement in this activity, so our energetic children are especially drawn to it.

 

Exploring Ice in the Sensory Table

This post contains affiliate links.

Exploring Ice in the Sensory Table

 

What you will need:

  • Ice
  • Water (we tinted ours blue to make it stand out as they added it to the ice)
  • Pipettes
  • A sensory table or a bin that can be placed on a table or floor
 
Exploring Ice in the Sensory Table
 Exploring Ice in the Sensory Table

Setting it up:

Freeze water in your choice of containers. Then, pop the ice out of the containers into the bin. Add containers of warm water (we tinted ours blue with some liquid watercolors), along with pipettes.

Exploring Ice in the Sensory Table

Hands-on exploration:

Watch as they touch the ice and realize it’s starting to melt.

Exploring Ice in the Sensory Table

Use the pipettes to squirt water on top of the ice.

Preschoolers love using pipettes. Teachers love how it helps fine motor development.

Exploring Ice in the Sensory Table

 As the ice melts, there will be more fun with the pipettes!

 Make sure to join us on Instagram, where you will find daily snippets of our classroom’s activities!

Exploring Ice in the Sensory Table

Here are more ideas to try:

Easy Winter Art Watercolor Snowflakes
Simple Activities for Kids Using a Few Ingredients
Preschool Shape Activities with Circles


 

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Filed Under: preschool, Sensory Bins, Winter Activities Tagged With: preschool, science, sensory, winter

About Sheryl Cooper

Sheryl Cooper is the founder of Teaching 2 and 3 Year Olds, a website full of activities for toddlers and preschoolers. She has been teaching this age group for over 20 years and loves to share her passion with teachers, parents, grandparents, and anyone with young children in their lives.

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Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Katie @ Gift of Curiosity

    January 9, 2013 at 4:24 am

    What a great activity! I just pinned this to use with my kids. 🙂

  2. Natasha

    February 8, 2015 at 12:35 pm

    A great activity!we often do play with salt and ice. I’m usually around when my girls play with salt or ice and I find that making a salt water mix makes me feel a little more comfortable but not to comfortable.

    • Sheryl

      February 8, 2015 at 7:20 pm

      We will be doing another salt activity this week. Supervised, of course!

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